Steam

Honestly that’s a great analogy.

I worked briefly as a CSR and during training they made a point of telling us that people had been fired because of doing exactly that when the mute button failed. That was over a decade ago, but I wouldn’t expect increased reliability today.

More recently, a friend who is a CSR told me that their software mute buttons only prevent the audio from going to the customer, but it’s still recorded and can be grounds for termination if the call was audited. I introduced her to a microphone with a physical mute button but made sure she knew that it could also fail (or most likely, that she might be using a different connected mic, in case the hardware mute would do nothing).

Office conferencing software also has a really bad record with their software mutes. I’ve had experiences with Teams, Zoom, and Webex where I’ve clicked mute, but wasn’t muted.

The mute button should be thought of as a feature for the person on the other line / the other people on the call - you’re reducing the noise so the focus can be on the conversation - not as a feature for your privacy. You can treat Private Games similarly - it’s so you don’t subject your friends to the thought of you playing sexually themed games, not so you’re guaranteed to be saved the embarrassment of people knowing that you’re playing them.